Every September, the canals of Venice, Italy transform into a red carpet as celebrities descend on the city for the annual film festival. For students and faculty at Trinity, the Venice Film Festival is more than a spectacle; it’s a case study in art, access and the politics of performance.
Jesus Castro Gorfti, senior lecturer of modern languages and literature, teaches a Spanish film class at Trinity. While the of the class focuses primarily on developments in the Spanish cinema world, he said that they also touch on the history of the Venice Film Festival.
According to Castro Gorfti, Giuseppe Volpi, Italian businessman, founded the Venice Film Festival in 1932 executed his vision for democratized cinema appreciation through the first festival.
“The idea was to showcase films. Prizes weren’t even given at the first festival,” Castro Gorfti said. “They had a popular vote among the people attending the movies, making them very democratic.”
According to Casrro Gorfti, the democratic spirit that belied the early Venice Film Festival was quickly overshadowed. He said that during World War II, Benito Mussolini’s regime used the festival as a tool of propaganda.
“In the ’40s, right after World War II, there was a revival of the festival,” Castro Gorfti said. “That’s when it started becoming the film festival that is recognized today.”
Castro Gorfti said that since then, the event has evolved into a symbol of exclusivity and glamor. The island of Lido, where the Venice Film Festival takes place, isolates outsiders from the festival.
“Actors arrive in private jets, and then they’re taken in private boats, gondolas,” Castro Gorfti said. “The geographical isolation makes it easy to control who gets to the island and who has no access to the island.”
To Castro Gorfti, the allure of Venice lies in its ability to elevate reality into spectacle.
“I remember the footage in the news growing up in Spain. It was the most glamorous footage,” Castro Gorfti said. “Look at the background, a private island in Venice. It’s like a movie within a movie.”
For Trinity students, they experienced glamor secondhand. Mia Montemayor, sophomore English major, is a film studies minor and follows the festival online every year.
“I follow a lot of actors, and I also love keeping up with directors, so I see most of the updates on Twitter, sometimes on Instagram,” Montemayor said. “I love watching the standing ovation videos or seeing who got the Golden Lion.”
For Montemayor, the exclusivity of the film festival builds appeal and glam for outside viewers like herself.
“It can be discouraging, as someone who wants to be in the film industry, but it also adds to the appeal,” Montemayor said. “The camera flashes, the beautiful designs, you want so bad to claw your way into that world. It’s bittersweet.”
Milani Weerakoon, first-year psychology major, is minoring in film studies and agreed with Montemayor’s assessment, but said she believes that the industry’s elitism also has an ethnic element. According to Weerakoon, Venice and other institutions within the film industry reinforce a narrow canon of cinematic value, often privileging Western aesthetics and narratives.
“De-Westernizing [cinema] is something we have to do,” Weerakoon said. “I don’t see a lot of representation of South Asian people in film that isn’t centered around Western stereotypes. I don’t want to sound cliche, but representation’s important.”
Weerakoon said that a few moments at this year’s festival revealed how far the industry still has to go. In a widely-circulated interview with Ayo Edebiri and her co-stars of “After the Hunt,” Italian journalist Federica Polidoro asked what to expect from Hollywood now that the MeToo movement and Black Lives Matter protests are “done.”
“I do think that the film community is moving forward, as the [Edibiri] interview proves,” Weerakoon said. “You can definitely see the impact that these movements have.”
For Castro Gorfti and his students, examining the history provided context for understanding both cinema and the 82-year-old festival today.
